Some more facts to ponder...
Drugs (including alcohol, tobacco, and street drugs) themselves do not cause schizophrenia.However, certain drugs can make symptoms worse or trigger a psychotic episode if a person already has schizophrenia. Drugs can also create schizophrenia-like symptoms in otherwise healthy individuals.
http://www.bergen.org/AMST/pc/schizophrenia/causes.html

There are a group of drugs currently on the market for depression and anxiety called "Selective Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitors" or, "SSRI's". You have heard of them: Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Luvox, Celexa and others. If you are taking any of these drugs, or if anyone is trying to get you to take one of these drugs, this notice is especially for you. SSRI theory is based on drug company sponsored research findings that indicated a lower level of the neurotransmitter serotonin in people who are "depressed." The SSRI drug prevents the re-uptake of serotonin by the brain, causing the serotonin to build up there, thereby boosting the amount of neurotransmission "necessary" to alleviate the depression. This is a horribly flawed theory that's had billions in financial and political investment over the last 20 years. And this is what the corporations, doctors and other mental health professionals aren't telling you:

Serotonin...a Powerful Vasoconstrictor...
Some of what the companies manufacturing these SSRI's, and what doctors prescribing this medication will very likely NOT tell you is this:
The Merriam-Webster online dictionary (http://www.m-w.com), as well as many other valid texts, define serotonin as, "a powerful vasoconstrictor", which is what it was discovered to be in 1948. A vasoconstrictor is an agent which constricts blood vessels and blood flow. While building up enough of the neurotransmitter serotonin in the brain to alleviate some symptoms of depression, the person taking these drugs is also building up enough of the same, vasoconstrictor serotonin to substantially decrease blood flow in the brain, and in the body as well - this is an often deadly oversight, especially when it comes to decreasing blood flow in the parts of the brain responsible for self control
http://www.antidepressantsfacts.com/articles-vasoconstrictor.htm(very good article)

Of the 25 most frequently prescribed drugs in 1992, the following drugs are associated with xerostomic side effects:
Zantac (ranitidine)
Xanax (alprazolam)
Seldane (terfenadine)
Naprosyn (naproxen) Prozac (fluoxetine)
Proventil (albuterol)
Tagamet (cimetidine)
Dyazide (triameterene)
Hydrochlorthiazide
In addition to prescribed medication, at least half of the doses ingested in the U.S. are over-the-counter drugs. Of those drugs, the most frequently used medications that have xerostomic side effects are as follows:

Myth #1: Marijuana use has been scientifically proven to be really harmful.

Fact #1 In 1972, after reviewing the scientific evidence, the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse concluded that while marijuana is not entirely safe, its dangers had been grossly overstated.

Fact #2 In 1995, based on thirty years of scientific research, editors of the British journal Lancet (the British equivalent of New England Journal of Medicine) concluded that "the smoking of cannabis, even long term, is not harmful to health."
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Myth #2: Marijuana has no medicinal value.

Fact #1 Marijuana has been shown to be effective in reducing nausea induced by cancer chemotherapy, stimulating appetite in AIDS patients, and reducing intraocular pressure in people with glaucoma.
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Myth #3: Marijuana use by kids is OK.

Fact #1 Marijuana use by kids, like alcohol and tobacco, is not OK. Its use is illegal, and the effect of marijuana on kids in their developmental stage has not been studied. Common sense tells us that marijuana use by kids is not a good idea.

Fact #2 Marijuana use by kids, coupled with other drug use and behavioral problems, can be a sign that a child needs professional attention.

Fact #3 90% of kids who try marijuana don't go on to use other drugs, and do not continue to use marijuana.
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Myth #4: Marijuana is highly addictive.

Fact #1 Most people who smoke marijuana smoke it only occasionally. A small minority of Americans --less than one percent - smoke marijuana on a daily or near-daily basis. An even smaller minority develops dependence on marijuana. Marijuana is not physically addictive.
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Myth #5: Marijuana leads to harder drugs (the "gateway theory").

Fact #1 Over 70 million people have tried marijuana. Most marijuana users never use any other illegal drug. Indeed, for the vast majority of people, marijuana is the last drug they try, not a "gateway" to other drugs. If it were a gateway drug and if it were so addictive, we would have more than 3 million heroin and cocaine addicts in the U.S.

Fact #2 Marijuana is the most popular illegal drug in the United States today. Therefore, people who have used less popular drugs such as heroin, cocaine and LSD are likely to have also tried marijuana.
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Myth #6: Marijuana impairs memory and cognition.

Fact #1 Marijuana produces immediate, temporary changes in thoughts, perceptions, and information processing. The cognitive process most clearly affected by marijuana is short-term memory. In laboratory studies, subjects under the influence of marijuana have no trouble remembering things they learned previously. However, they display diminished capacity to learn and recall new information. This diminishment only lasts for the duration of intoxication.
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Myth #7: Marijuana causes crime. Under the influence of marijuana, people become irrational, aggressive, and violent.

Fact #1 Every serious scholar and government commission examining the relationship between marijuana use and crime has reached the same conclusion: Marijuana does not cause crime. The vast majority of marijuana users do not commit crimes. Almost all human and animal studies show that marijuana decreases aggression.
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Myth #8: Marijuana can cause infertility and retards sexual development in adolescents.

Fact #1 There is NO evidence that marijuana causes infertility in men or women. Most studies of humans have found that marijuana has no impact on sex hormones. In those studies showing an impact, it is modest, temporary, and of no apparent consequence for reproduction.

Fact #2 There is NO scientific evidence that marijuana delays adolescent sexual development, has a feminizing effect on males, or a masculinizing effect on females.
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Myth #9: Marijuana is more damaging to the lungs than tobacco.

Fact #1 Moderate smoking of marijuana appears to pose minimal danger to the lungs.
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Myth #10: Marijuana use is a major cause of highway accidents.

Fact #1 There is no compelling evidence that marijuana contributes substantially to traffic accidents and fatalities. In driving studies, marijuana produces little or no car-handling impairment - consistently less than that produced by low to moderate doses of alcohol and many legal medications.

Fact #2 People should not drive while under the influence of marijuana. At some doses, marijuana affects perceptions and psychomotor performance.
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Fact #1 There is no lethal dose of marijuana. You cannot die from "binge smoking" like you can from binge drinking.

Fact #2 The number of people in hospital emergency rooms who say they have used marijuana has increased. This does not mean that people come to the emergency room because of marijuana. Many more teenagers use marijuana than hard drugs like heroin and cocaine. As a result, when teenagers visit hospital emergency rooms, they report marijuana much more frequently than they report heroin or cocaine.

Fact #3 In 1994, fewer than 2 percent of drug-related emergency room visits involved the use of marijuana alone.
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Myth #12: Marijuana is more potent today than in the past.

Fact #1 Marijuana is the same drug it has always been.

Fact #2 Potency data from the early 1980s do not show an increase in the average THC content of marijuana.
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Myth #13: Marijuana use can be prevented.

Fact #1 There is no evidence that spending billions of dollars over the past 20 years for anti-drug messages has diminished young people's interest in trying marijuana.

Fact #2 For most age groups, rates of marijuana use in the Netherlands are similar to those in the United States. However, for young adolescents, rates of marijuana use are LOWER in the Netherlands than in the United States.

MARIJUANA MYTHS
by Paul Hager
Chair, ICLU Drug Task Force
1. Marijuana causes brain damage
The most celebrated study that claims to show brain damage is the rhesus monkey study of Dr. Robert Heath, done in the late 1970s. This study was reviewed by a distinguished panel of scientists sponsored by the Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences. Their results were published under the title, Marijuana and Health in 1982. Heath's work was sharply criticized for its insufficient sample size (only four monkeys), its failure to control experimental bias, and the misidentification of normal monkey brain structure as "damaged". Actual studies of human populations of marijuana users have shown no evidence of brain damage. For example, two studies from 1977, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) showed no evidence of brain damage in heavy users of marijuana. That same year, the American Medical Association (AMA) officially came out in favor of decriminalizing marijuana. That's not the sort of thing you'd expect if the AMA thought marijuana damaged the brain.

2. Marijuana damages the reproductive system
This claim is based chiefly on the work of Dr. Gabriel Nahas, who experimented with tissue (cells) isolated in petri dishes, and the work of researchers who dosed animals with near-lethal amounts of cannabinoids (i.e., the intoxicating part of marijuana). Nahas' generalizations from his petri dishes to human beings have been rejected by the scientific community as being invalid. In the case of the animal experiments, the animals that survived their ordeal returned to normal within 30 days of the end of the experiment. Studies of actual human populations have failed to demonstrate that marijuana adversely affects the reproductive system.

3. Marijuana is a "gateway" drug-it leads to hard drugs
This is one of the more persistent myths. A real world example of what happens when marijuana is readily available can be found in Holland. The Dutch partially legalized marijuana in the 1970s. Since then, hard drug use-heroin and cocaine-have DECLINED substantially. If marijuana really were a gateway drug, one would have expected use of hard drugs to have gone up, not down. This apparent "negative gateway" effect has also been observed in the United States. Studies done in the early 1970s showed a negative correlation between use of marijuana and use of alcohol. A 1993 Rand Corporation study that compared drug use in states that had decriminalized marijuana versus those that had not, found that where marijuana was more available-the states that had decriminalized-hard drug abuse as measured by emergency room episodes decreased. In short, what science and actual experience tell us is that marijuana tends to substitute for the much more dangerous hard drugs like alcohol, cocaine, and heroin.

4. Marijuana suppresses the immune system
Like the studies claiming to show damage to the reproductive system, this myth is based on studies where animals were given extremely high-in many cases, near-lethal-doses of cannabinoids. These results have never been duplicated in human beings. Interestingly, two studies done in 1978 and one done in 1988 showed that hashish and marijuana may have actually stimulated the immune system in the people studied.

5. Marijuana is much more dangerous than tobacco
Smoked marijuana contains about the same amount of carcinogens as does an equivalent amount of tobacco. It should be remembered, however, that a heavy tobacco smoker consumes much more tobacco than a heavy marijuana smoker consumes marijuana. This is because smoked tobacco, with a 90% addiction rate, is the most addictive of all drugs while marijuana is less addictive than caffeine. Two other factors are important. The first is that paraphernalia laws directed against marijuana users make it difficult to smoke safely. These laws make water pipes and bongs, which filter some of the carcinogens out of the smoke, illegal and, hence, unavailable. The second is that, if marijuana were legal, it would be more economical to have cannabis drinks like bhang (a traditional drink in the Middle East) or tea which are totally non-carcinogenic. This is in stark contrast with "smokeless" tobacco products like snuff which can cause cancer of the mouth and throat. When all of these facts are taken together, it can be clearly seen that the reverse is true: marijuana is much SAFER than tobacco.

6. Legal marijuana would cause carnage on the highways
Although marijuana, when used to intoxication, does impair performance in a manner similar to alcohol, actual studies of the effect of marijuana on the automobile accident rate suggest that it poses LESS of a hazard than alcohol. When a random sample of fatal accident victims was studied, it was initially found that marijuana was associated with RELATIVELY as many accidents as alcohol. In other words, the number of accident victims intoxicated on marijuana relative to the number of marijuana users in society gave a ratio similar to that for accident victims intoxicated on alcohol relative to the total number of alcohol users. However, a closer examination of the victims revealed that around 85% of the people intoxicated on marijuana WERE ALSO INTOXICATED ON ALCOHOL. For people only intoxicated on marijuana, the rate was much lower than for alcohol alone. This finding has been supported by other research using completely different methods. For example, an economic analysis of the effects of decriminalization on marijuana usage found that states that had reduced penalties for marijuana possession experienced a rise in marijuana use and a decline in alcohol use with the result that fatal highway accidents decreased. This would suggest that, far from causing "carnage", legal marijuana might actually save lives.

7. Marijuana "flattens" human brainwaves
This is an out-and-out lie perpetrated by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America. A few years ago, they ran a TV ad that purported to show, first, a normal human brainwave, and second, a flat brainwave from a 14-year-old "on marijuana". When researchers called up the TV networks to complain about this commercial, the Partnership had to pull it from the air. It seems that the Partnership faked the flat "marijuana brainwave". In reality, marijuana has the effect of slightly INCREASING alpha wave activity. Alpha waves are associated with meditative and relaxed states which are, in turn, often associated with human creativity.

8. Marijuana is more potent today than in the past
This myth is the result of bad data. The researchers who made the claim of increased potency used as their baseline the THC content of marijuana seized by police in the early 1970s. Poor storage of this marijuana in un-air conditioned evidence rooms caused it to deteriorate and decline in potency before any chemical assay was performed. Contemporaneous, independent assays of unseized "street" marijuana from the early 1970s showed a potency equivalent to that of modern "street" marijuana. Actually, the most potent form of this drug that was generally available was sold legally in the 1920s and 1930s by the pharmaceutical company Smith-Klein under the name, "American Cannabis".

9. Marijuana impairs short-term memory
This is true but misleading. Any impairment of short-term memory disappears when one is no longer under the influence of marijuana. Often, the short-term memory effect is paired with a reference to Dr. Heath's poor rhesus monkeys to imply that the condition is permanent.

10. Marijuana lingers in the body like DDT
This is also true but misleading. Cannabinoids are fat soluble as are innumerable nutrients and, yes, some poisons like DDT. For example, the essential nutrient, Vitamin A, is fat soluble but one never hears people who favor marijuana prohibition making this comparison.

11. There are over a thousand chemicals in marijuana smoke
Again, true but misleading. The 31 August 1990 issue of the magazine Science notes that of the over 800 volatile chemicals present in roasted COFFEE, only 21 have actually been tested on animals and 16 of these cause cancer in rodents. Yet, coffee remains legal and is generally considered fairly safe.

12. No one has ever died of a marijuana overdose
This is true. It was put in to see if you are paying attention. Animal tests have revealed that extremely high doses of cannabinoids are needed to have lethal effect. This has led scientists to conclude that the ratio of the amount of cannabinoids necessary to get a person intoxicated (i.e., stoned) relative to the amount necessary to kill them is 1 to 40,000. In other words, to overdose, you would have to consume 40,000 times as much marijuana as you needed to get stoned. In contrast, the ratio for alcohol varies between 1 to 4 and 1 to 10. It is easy to see how upwards of 5000 people die from alcohol overdoses every year and no one EVER dies of marijuana overdoses.
http://www.drugtext.org/sub/marmyt1.html (sources listed on site)

Sat Jul 12, 2003 2:47 am

kese

Joined: 16 Mar 2003
Posts: 5454

I had to use an alternitave search engine (http://www.alltheweb.com) to find these sites. I could not find any info regarding this issue from this point of view on Yahoo or Excite, both of which are Big Buisness, and are the search engines that are primarily used to provide us with information on the web. Now i believe this says something. I suggest that you use this or similar search engines to find evidence, because the "Normal" ones seem to be suppressing info, and limiting options. I'm supprised that when I searched for "alternative search engines" that I actually was directed to others.
And with a good 5 hrs, worth of research and typing on 3hrs sleep, I'm out. Peace to everyone and good night.. and i'll leave you with this quote to help guide the discussion on the right path....

dallasbboy wrote: I like how half the kids on this board like to think of themselves as "intelligent" hip hoppers yet they advocate the use of marijuana like no other.

Trust your surgeon or pilot on THC?

Yeah I didn't think so. Carry on.

Brian

Damn! You couldn't be anymore right.

Sat Jul 12, 2003 4:10 am

Nope

Joined: 23 Jan 2003
Posts: 1916

I haven't been in this argument at all....but that post by dallas boy pretty much missed the point

cause I could say

trust your surgeon or pilot "on alcohol"?

but alcohol is legal isn't it?

I don't really smoke...I have...but it's not a habit of mine, nor have I ever bought it. Haven't smoked in who knows how long...but I think mari being illegal is pretty fucking silly and there really is no logical reason considering the other things that are legal

but a change in law would be total fucking chaos concerning the issue for the short period of time it would take society to adjust....much worse than it would be if they lowered the completely ridiculous drinking age

Sat Jul 12, 2003 4:40 am

FoJaR

Joined: 06 Feb 2003
Posts: 1534
Location: VA.

legalization of marajuana would mean commercialization of marajuana. and who knows, the bastards might start sneaking nicotine in. i wouldnt put it past them.

oh, and you did a pretty good job of convincing me. still not gonna smoke though. peace.

Sat Jul 12, 2003 5:35 pm

kese

Joined: 16 Mar 2003
Posts: 5454

I agree with that. Nicotine or worse.. Shady bastards....

Sat Jul 12, 2003 8:32 pm

The_Human

Joined: 30 Jan 2003
Posts: 1693

rangaluk wrote:

dallasbboy wrote: I like how half the kids on this board like to think of themselves as "intelligent" hip hoppers yet they advocate the use of marijuana like no other.

Trust your surgeon or pilot on THC?

Yeah I didn't think so. Carry on.

Brian

Damn! You couldn't be anymore right.

THere is a time and place for marijuana and flying a plane isnt one of them. It does impair your reactions but so do A LOT of things, MUCH WORSE THAN MARIJUANA DOES!!!!

Trust your pilot on some oxycontins?? I do them everyday and I wouldnt........

Trust your pilot on some alcohol??

Trust your pilot on low sleep??

Trust your pilot if hes depressed?? Got other things on his mind??

Get the point??

Nobody is saying to go fly a plane high, but to listen to some music, or read a book, or watch a movie hgit does give you a new angle on it all. Something you would NEVER see without it.

Sat Jul 12, 2003 9:49 pm

wordsauce

Joined: 27 Jul 2002
Posts: 331
Location: Urbana, IL

kese brings focus...

SHAFER REPORT or SHAFER COMMISSION.

i got sucked into the thread's less-fine points early on, but i guess these new words should be enough.

Fom our Nation's Capital... Washington, DC:
"We need ... 'all out war.'"
That was Richard Nixon's reaction to his national commission's recommendation that marijuana no longer be a criminal offense according to recently declassified Oval Office tapes. The year after Nixon's "all out war" marijuana arrests jumped by over 100,000 people even though the experts said it should not be criminal.